Rosebud161616's 15 gallon custom built nano

Well I hope I'm not jinxing myself by starting this thread without water testing my tank, but here goes nothing...

I have had an idea in my head for some time for a nano tank. My husband, kev2me, and I have always thought we would get small nano cubes once we move and have dueling nanos. Well when this contest came along, I decided to move my idea up and get my nano going.

My idea was always to have a "cube" type tank that could be viewed from all sides and a center overflow. The rockwork would be like a volcano. The overflow would, of course, house the drain to the sump and the return plumbing. The idea is that you would not see any equipment in the tank whatsoever.

Then I plan to fill the center overflow most of the way with sand... making a sort of remote DSB. I plan to have mangrove growing out of the center of the "volcano."

I sat down with google sketchup and made some preliminary drawings. I found that the tank had to be more wide than tall in order to accommodate the overflow and still allow for pyramid type rockwork. So the tank ended up being more like a cube cut horizontally in half.

Here are a few pictures that I made with google sketchup. Don't make fun of them... there seems to be a huge learning curve with this program!

Here is a side view of the tank. The overflow will have 4 bulkheads, one for each side. The dimensions of the tank are 20x20x10. The center overflow is 6x6x9. With 1/4" glass, that leaves 3/4" from the total height of the sides. I estimate the water flowing over will add about 1/4" so the water height should be about 1/2" from the top. That tan part of the picture is 1" of sand.

Here is a side view with the overflow see through so that you can see the internal plumbing. I plan to have 2 stand pipes and then the return pump divided with a 5 way to the bulkheads. Yep I'll get a lot of head loss, but I feel like it is a good trade off for a nice, clean tank.

Top down view:

This is the view from the bottom looking up. I couldn't figure out how to make the "sand" fill like a rectangle so it looks like it's recessed. Just use your imagination.

wow Rosebud..very nice..so in the last illustration each nozzel coming out on each side of the overflow..are your returns and the 3 black circles are your drains..very interesting.. subscribing to this one..cant wait to see this one in action..

So the next step was to research the tank. All of the quotes I got to custom build the tank were pretty pricey. I did some research and decided I would try my hand at building my own tank!

I found glasscages to be the cheapest place to get cut glass. They were coming to my city for deliveries in a week... Perfect! I called and got the glass ordered. I heard horror stories of trying to deal with the company but I had a great experience. They were super nice and Kev went to the delivery point for the glass pickup, but he said it went very smoothly. The website said there was additional fees for sanding and swiping the glass, and since I didn't ever request any, I expected to get sharp pieces of glass. Too my surprise they were all nicely sanded and ready to have a tank made out of them!

I ordered some RTV108 silicone because I read it was the strongest for tank building. I think it was like $13 with shipping.

I picked up a bunch of bulkheads and flexible PVC from Savko. I still need to get a 1/2" 5 way PVC fitting on order...

Next step was to drill the 7 holes. I already had a 1/2" drill bit from a previous build, so I got to work. I think I need a new bit now... by the 7th hole it was feeling pretty dull. No pics here, sorry.

And finally it was time to start putting it all together. Here are a few shots from last night:

And here is a close up of the center overflow:

Overall the build went pretty smoothly. The fumes are fun . Today I'll take a razor to the outside and clean up the excess silicone that squirted out. Then in a few days I can water test.

wow Rosebud..very nice..so in the last illustration each nozzel coming out on each side of the overflow..are your returns and the 3 black circles are your drains..very interesting.. subscribing to this one..cant wait to see this one in action..

Rick

Thanks!

Actually the last picture is like you're laying below the tank and looking up (yeah hard to tell with my clear sand... ). there are 3 holes in the bottom of the tank. 2 are drains and one is the return. The return is divided into 4 and then pumped into the tank through a bulkhead in each side of the overflow. The water will flow over the overflow into that center section where it will drain through 2 stand pipes. Does that make more sense? It's hard to put all of this in writing!

For lighting, I will be going LED. We are almost completely LED in all of our tanks now. We have built all of the fixtures ourselves, so might as well do one here too!

Yeah, I know, kind of defeats the purpose of the prize for the nano, but I already started this tank so might as well do the contest! I'm sure I can put that light to use some how if I do happen to get lucky and win!

Here is the layout that I have come up with. I will have 8 whites, 8 blues, and 8 royal blues. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. On the other fixtures I was not a fan of all royal blues. It made the tank too purple. All blues is too windex-y. I like the combination of the two.

As for the 2:1 ratio... on the other tanks I have the ability to dim them with our apex so I am closer to 1:1 on those (though I still have a couple extra blues thrown in). This tank won't be in an area where I can easily hook up to the apex and we're out of variable voltage ports on the apex. I would have to buy one of those extra variable voltage modules they just came out with and I think they're like $200. I'm not willing to shell out that kind of cash right now on what was supposed to be an affordable nano contest tank (does affordable tank exist??? )

I'm thinking I'll use 2 meanwell drivers. I was originally positive I would not do dimmable, but now I'm considering it. That way I could hook it to the apex down the line if I ever wanted... I can use a 9v cell phone charger to power the variable voltage line and light all of the LEDs at 90%.

I may end up putting an extra one or two whites in the center for the mangroves.

The heat sink area is pretty large, so it will probably have to be made out of 2 heat sinks put together.

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